The framework of civil disobedience allows more latitude for actions we would otherwise condemn outright. Great historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr have emblazoned civil disobedience on contemporary consciousness.

So where does Snowden stand in this tradition? The consensus at the Santa Clara University event was that Snowden could indeed be placed within such a framework. In other words, he wasn’t simply a reckless outlaw (much less a traitor or spy).

But within that consensus were two sharply different views of the moral worth of his civil disobedience. One view held that his actions were justifiable across the board as a corrective to the systemic overreach of the National Security Agency. (My colleague on the panel with me at the event, Irina Raicu, director of Internet ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, held such a view.) The other view acknowledged a far more limited justification for his actions on account of his Internet culture-inspired libertarian philosophy.

Snowden’s actions have been most justifiable when he has closely linked the existence of once secret NSA programs to broadly acknowledged values that a particular program may have violated. The best example here was his revelation of the existence of NSA troves of metadata on the phone calls of Americans—a revelation that rightly raised general concerns about the protection of privacy. But he has also, in the name of transparency, revealed things of far more ambiguous value (for instance, NSA spying on the political leaders of American allies) and stolen such a massive numbers of files that it’s not clear what more specific values are at stake in such a huge theft.

Snowden’s actions are best explained by situating him within the libertarian tradition of “information freedom” represented by figures like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. For these figures, information freedom largely means the “freeing of information” from its secret hold by massive institutions.

It is important here to note that the ethical issue isn’t so much what the information is about; the issue is that the information is being kept secret at all (as if secrecy is inherently evil) and ought to be freed, especially so people can make decisions. This is a new, Internet version of old-time libertarianism. The assumption is that the privacy of the isolated individual is pitted against the information-amassing, secrecy-obsessed, power-mad state or corporation.

But this makes things too simple, especially for what we expect in acts of civil disobedience. Two key differences between Snowden and Martin Luther King Jr’s example make this clear. The first pertains to what King called “negotiation,” the second of four key steps leading toward direct, nonviolent civil disobedience (the others are study, self-purification, and the direct action itself).

For King, the duty to negotiate revealed, among other things, a good-faith belief that even the segregationists running the government in cities like Birmingham, Alabama, were fellow human beings with a capacity to learn and be just. If Martin Luther King Jr could seek to negotiate with Bull Connor, Birmingham’s police chief, why couldn’t Edward Snowden transcend the libertarian cynicism toward government officials and try to speak with known NSA critics like Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul?

The second key difference pertains to King’s conviction that all those engaging in civil disobedience must be willing to accept legal punishment for their actions. At bottom, this concern was a way to reaffirm the value of the law in itself. Moreover, submitting to such punishment was also a way to affirm by word and deed the moral good of the political community. By contrast, of course, Snowden now sits in Russia, avoiding such accountability and thus also undermining the value of both the law and the political community. Trapped in libertarian polarities, he remains the lonely, heroic individual squaring off against the vast power of the state.

But he would be truer to what is morally at stake in his actions and to the highest tradition of civil disobedience if he came home to face the consequences.

]]>Is Edward Snowden a hero for revealing government wrongdoing, or a traitor for leaking classified information? “I don’t think anybody acts and says to themselves, ‘What I’m doing is immoral, but I’m going to do it.’ People always rationalize,” according to former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Correspondent Lucky Severson reports on the debate over the morality of Snowden’s actions.

]]>Watch our conversation with Michael Kessler of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs about perspectives of religious and ethical traditions on the government’s massive collection of electronic data and its vast surveillance effort.

ABED AWAD, Awad & Khoury Law Office: We can have a will compliant with shariah, no problem.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the Awad & Khoury law offices near Newark, New Jersey, attorney Abed Awad consults with Muslims about creating contracts, wills and other legal documents that adhere to the principles of shariah, Islamic law. And that’s important to Muslims like Asif Mustafa.

ASIF MUSTAFA: The way of shariah means that there’s a guideline for how I should be interacting or doing commerce.

LAWTON: Awad says over the past decade, he’s handled more than 100 cases that have involved some component of Islamic law. Now, a growing movement seeks to ban state courts from considering Shariah in any way. Awad says this would restrict his ability to litigate cases…and judges’ ability to decide them.

AWAD: These things will trickle down to your average American Muslim when it comes to distributing his estate, getting married, issues regarding their dissolution of marriage. This is divesting courts of their own authority.

LAWTON: But proponents say legislation is necessary to protect American interests. Karen Lugo is an attorney and anti-shariah activist.

KAREN LUGO, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence: The problem is that within a society of a Western culture, you cannot have two prevailing legal systems side by side. Ultimately there will be a breakdown of what we, in our country, have agreed to be governed by, which is this consent to live under a rule of law, not of men, not of clerics.

LAWTON: Shariah is an Arabic word that means “path to the watering hole.” For Muslims, shariah is the divine law revealed in the Quran.

AWAD: Shariah is a methodology to engage in the divine text, to ascertain divine will. It’s constantly in flux, it’s evolving, it’s very flexible.

AZIZAH AL-HIBRI, Karamah: The other meaning of shariah, which is the more common, is this human interpretation of divine law, which is then codified into law and differs for country to country. And generally when we’re talking about shariah or even criticizing it, we tend to be thinking of the human interpretation.

LAWTON: The bulk of shariah deals with topics surrounding worship, diet, family relationships and financial transactions. But there are also principles for political order, crime, and punishment. And how these have been interpreted and applied in many predominantly Muslim countries raises concerns here in the U.S. David Yerushalmi, an attorney and Orthodox Jew, is one of the most prominent—and controversial–voices in the anti-shariah movement.

DAVID YERUSHALMI, Center for Security Policy: If you look at the actual doctrine that the Mujahedeen, the various jihadists around the globe say drives their jihad against the west, it is shariah law and its doctrine of jihad. If we are to take them seriously, and I would of course suggest that we ought to, than that becomes a national security threat.

LAWTON: Some people who have lived in countries where shariah is the basis of law agree.

NONIE DARWISH, Former Muslims United: It’s really time for the West to understand, what are the consequences of welcoming shariah, or even saying that shariah is misunderstood. There is nothing misunderstood about a law that condemns women to stoning, to death, and to flogging.

LAWTON: There’s been a contentious shariah debate across the country. In 2010, voters in Oklahoma passed an initiative to ban state courts from considering shariah. But a court challenge has so far prevented it from taking effect. Activists are now supporting bills that don’t explicitly mention shariah, but instead ban courts from considering any foreign law. Four states have now enacted such laws, and similar bills have been taken up in more than 20 other states.

LAWTON: Yerushalmi wrote a widely-used model bill called “American Laws for American Courts.”

YERUSHALMI: It doesn’t identify Shariah per se because it doesn’t have to, although Shariah certainly incorporated within its reach. It says, any foreign law or foreign judgment that would violate in the particular case at issue a fundamental constitutional liberty of one of the parties, due process, equal protection, the court will not grant it recognition.

LAWTON: Azizah al-Hibri is professor emeritus at the University of Richmond Law School and founder of Karamah, Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. She says she too is concerned by how shariah has been interpreted and implemented in some places, especially overseas against women, arguing that it is not a true representation of Islam. Still, Al-Hibri says anti-shariah legislation is unnecessary because under the American legal system.

AL-HIBRI: Our constitution basically trumps everything else. And that also goes on the state level with the state law. You don’t just bring a law from another country and impose it here if it is against public policy. That’s not how we work here.

AWAD: We can have a valid polygamous marriage out of Egypt and if this polygamous marriage is brought to the United States and the court is requested to enforce Egyptian law which would permit polygamy, but that violates our public policy, so a US court would not recognize it.

LAWTON: Awad, who also teaches at Rutgers Law School and Pace Law School, says the circumstances where shariah is relevant in US courts are limited, mainly to providing additional information for a judge reviewing, for example, a contract that follows shariah financial guidelines.

AWAD: He applies basic New Jersey contract law. So he’s not really enforcing shariah. Shariah is just a tool to aid the court to better understand what it is reviewing.

LAWTON: Awad says anti-foreign law bills could affect other religious groups as well.

AWAD: This vast net that is being cast to prevent state judges from considering any foreign law is catching in its net Jewish law, Canon law, Hindu law.

LAWTON: Interfaith groups, including many Jewish groups, have also been vocally opposed to the legislation.

RABBI DAVID SAPERSTEIN, Religious Action Center: We refuse to be divided along religious lines. It is what is at stake in this debate over shariah law. And I’m proud to stand with all of you and my colleagues here to say that is simply un-American at the deepest and most profound level.

LAWTON: Anti-shariah activists contend that Islamic law has been used in unfair decisions against women, especially in domestic cases. In the most frequently-cited case, a New Jersey woman tried to get a restraining order against her husband, alleging that he raped and beat her. After hearing testimony that the husband’s Muslim faith obligates wives to have sex with their husbands, the judge denied the restraining order. Many Muslims agree that was a mistake.

AL-HIBRI: Muslims were upset because we don’t believe especially women, that God permits the man to beat the wife. Human rights activists were upset. Constitutional scholars were upset. Everybody was upset. And you know who was upset as well? The appellate court which immediately reversed that decision, because it was a bad decision.

YERUSHALMI: The woman happened to have an attorney and she happened to have sufficient funds to make an appeal. And only then was it corrected. Well, how many women, like this woman, who can’t afford an appeal?

LAWTON: Muslims around the country say the legislative efforts discriminate against them.

NAEEM BAIG, Islamic Circle of North America: It is to create this fear of Islam and Muslims in the larger society, that “oh, Islam does not belong in America. These are foreigners, don’t trust them.

LAWTON: The Islamic Circle of North America, ICNA, has launched a national multi-million dollar campaign to counter what it believes are negative misperceptions about shariah. The campaign features billboards, informational mailings, and community forums about what shariah is and is not.

ASIM KHAN: Thank-you for calling 1-855-Shariah. How can I help you?

LAWTON: ICNA has also set up a toll-free hotline where Muslims and non-Muslims can call to ask questions about shariah or get information about the push for legislation.

BAIG: They can say that it is anti-foreign law but we know that it is targeting one community, one faith.

YERUSHALMI: Is not the shariah doctrine part of the jihadist doctrine? The moment you begin to just ask the question and engage in a real discourse, you become branded as an Islamophobe and they attack you and they attack you.

LAWTON: Anti-shariah proponents say they intend to keep up the pressure on at the local level.

YERUSHALMI: If the law doesn’t pass, it engages enormous debate because the opposition has put the brakes on, but that means it comes up again at the next session and there’s another public debate.

LAWTON: Al-Hibri’s group Karamah has been sponsoring town-hall meetings to make sure the public debate includes Islamic law experts. She says open dialogue and education are the only way to resolve the conflict.

AL-HIBRI: The Muslims should not live in fear and the non-Muslims should not live in fear. This is a country which is based on courage, on production, on trusting each other and if we need to talk about it, let’s talk about it and get over any Islamophobia, which is unjustified.

LAWTON: But given the level of polarization, resolution isn’t likely any time soon. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/08/thumb01-sharia-controversy.jpg“It targets one community, one faith,” says Naeem Baig of proposed legislation to ban US state courts from considering shariah. “It is to create this fear of Islam and Muslims in the larger society.”

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/08/03/august-3-2012-shariah-controversy/12202/feed/15American Muslims,Islam,Islamophobia,Kosher,law enforcement,national security,Rabbi David Saperstein,sharia,US Constitution"It targets one community, one faith," says Naeem Baig of proposed legislation to ban US state courts from considering shariah. "It is to create this fear of Islam and Muslims in the larger society.""It targets one community, one faith," says Naeem Baig of proposed legislation to ban US state courts from considering shariah. "It is to create this fear of Islam and Muslims in the larger society."Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:59Congressional Hearings on American Muslimshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/09/congressional-hearings-on-american-muslims/8313/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/09/congressional-hearings-on-american-muslims/8313/#commentsWed, 09 Mar 2011 22:05:05 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=8313More →

]]>As Congress prepares for March 10 hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims called by Rep. Peter King of New York, watch highlights from a recent Capitol Hill briefing on Islamophobia in the United States hosted by the Arab American Institute and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Speakers included Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute; Matthew Duss, national security editor for the Center for American Progress; Deepa Iyer, executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together; Suhail Khan, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement; and Alejandro Beutel, government and policy analyst for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

On March 10, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is to open hearings on “the radicalization of American Muslims.” Watch excerpts from a Capitol Hill briefing held in advance of the hearings./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/03/thumb02-islampanel.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/09/congressional-hearings-on-american-muslims/8313/feed/4Alejandro Beutel,American Muslims,Arab American Institute,Congress,Deepa Iyer,Democracy,Faith,Islam,Islamic extremism,Islamophobia,Matthew Duss,Maya BerryOn March 10, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to open hearings on "the radicalization of American Muslims." Watch excerpts from a Capitol Hill briefing held in advance of the hearings.On March 10, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to open hearings on "the radicalization of American Muslims." Watch excerpts from a Capitol Hill briefing held in advance of the hearings.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno4:58 Religious Reaction to Budget Cutshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/04/march-4-2011-religious-reaction-to-budget-cuts/8305/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/04/march-4-2011-religious-reaction-to-budget-cuts/8305/#commentsFri, 04 Mar 2011 18:18:53 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=8305More →

KIM LAWTON: Faith-based groups stepped up lobbying efforts as Congress continues to battle over potential budget cuts. Religious conservatives maintain that addressing the government’s massive debt is a moral issue. Meanwhile, a diverse interfaith coalition urged members of Congress to consider how cuts would hurt poor people in the US and around the world. As part of that effort, several prominent Christian leaders launched a new ad campaign asking “what would Jesus cut?”

Joining me with more on this is Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service. Kevin, there’s been a huge mobilization, it seems, from many quarters of the religious community on these budget issues.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): Right and you’re seeing it from both the left and the right. From the left, the more progressive side, you see traditional lobbying to keep programs like home heating assistance and school lunches and aid for, you know, women and children, sort of your bread and butter domestic issues. On the right, you’re seeing a lot of action to try to protect the international development assistance, money to buy mosquito nets to prevent malaria and to fight AIDS in Africa, and food for the hungry and refugees and things like that. So you’ve got various groups lobbying for various issues, each hoping that their preferred pot makes the cut.

LAWTON: And a lot of those folks, both on the left and the right, are using moral language and scriptural language, saying, you know, the Bible urges people to care, look out for the vulnerable, the widows, the orphans, and the least of these, and so you are seeing this sort of biblical language.

ECKSTROM: Right, and it’s biblical language on both sides. The more traditional churches, Catholic bishops and your mainline churches and your Jewish groups are saying, you know, we have a biblical and ethical, moral obligation to care for people who can’t help themselves. On the other side, from the more conservative side, especially from the Tea Party, you have arguments saying that it’s actually immoral to leave debt to future generations. And they sometimes chafe at the notion of, you know, what would Jesus cut? They say, well, Jesus didn’t have opinions on this, you know, that it’s up to us to sort of make the decisions on what to cut. But you get various moral arguments from both sides, and we’re just waiting to see who wins the day.

LAWTON: Well, I was at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention this week, and one of their keynote speakers was House Speaker John Boehner, Catholic, who used a lot of biblical language in his speech. He had a very receptive, mostly evangelical audience, and he quoted Scripture. He quoted from Proverbs, “A good man leaves behind an inheritance to his children’s children,” and he said Republicans want to not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the word, another scriptural reference there. And, you know, I found that very interesting, that you had the congressional leadership on the right also trying to seize the biblical and moral language on all of this.

ECKSTROM: Yeah, and it’s going on on both sides in sort of different directions, even I think one of the more interesting splits has been within the evangelical community, where you have sort of small-government evangelicals who want to cut, you know—we need to balance the budget, we can’t have this debt. And then you have another portion of the evangelicals who say, well, we can—government can do good things, and government can make a difference in parts of the world where we have interests, and it’s not just moral interests, it’s strategic interests, and so let’s protect the programs that actually work. Let’s not cut from AIDS funding, for example, which President Bush poured a lot of money into. So you get this interesting divide within especially the conservative religious community over their political loyalties and sort of their religious underpinnings.

LAWTON: And some of those moral arguments I’ve been hearing—I’m sorry, the pragmatic arguments I’ve been hearing, in additional to the moral ones, are that it’s in America’s national security, that folks around the world who have food and a decent job and a place to live and have a good, stable social situation are less likely to be recruited by terrorists. Or they also just say America’s reputation as well. I know when I was in Sri Lanka after the tsunami and the US poured in so much help, or Haiti—US poured in so much help. That really want a long way to improving America’s image around the world.

ECKSTROM: Right, I mean, you’ve been to all these places, you can see the difference that it makes when you’ve got these bags of rice that come in with the American flag on it and people look at that and they see us as a good country. But there are sort of national security arguments to be made and think they are fairly effective, that people who are fed, who have good schools, and who don’t have to worry about what they are going to eat that night are less likely to be recruited into extremism.

LAWTON: And we’ll both be watching in the weeks to come. Thank you, Kevin.

As Congress debates the budget, religious conservatives say the debt is a moral issue, and an interfaith coalition has launched a campaign to reduce military spending and prevent cuts for the poor./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/03/thumb01-budget.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/04/march-4-2011-religious-reaction-to-budget-cuts/8305/feed/1biblical,budget,Congress,Debt,deficit,Evangelical,Faith-based,government,Interfaith,John Boehner,Moral,national securityAs Congress debates the budget, religious conservatives say the debt is a moral issue, and an interfaith coalition has launched a campaign to reduce military spending and prevent cuts for the poor.As Congress debates the budget, religious conservatives say the debt is a moral issue, and an interfaith coalition has launched a campaign to reduce military spending and prevent cuts for the poor.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno4:38 WikiLeaks Ethicshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/11/february-11-2011-wikileaks-ethics/8125/
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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It was the disclosure of this classified video in 2010 of a US military helicopter shooting civilians and journalists in Baghdad that drew the world’s attention to the anti-secrecy organization called WikiLeaks. It was an embarrassment for the Pentagon, followed by the leak of thousand of cables about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there was the release of US diplomatic cables amounting to 250,000 documents containing 240 million words. The reaction in Washington echoed the view of former Ambassador Ed Rowell.

AMBASSADOR EDWARD ROWELL: Horror, horror, and I can tell you a lot of my colleagues—I’m retired, but currently colleagues in the State Department felt the same sense of horror, and it was a feeling that was shared from the top to the bottom.

SEVERSON: The general feeling was that national security interests outweighed the public’s right to know and that what WikiLeaks did was morally and ethically wrong and maybe illegal. The attorney general launched an investigation, one that deeply troubles Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center.

STEPHEN KOHN: I think the prosecution of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act would be completely irresponsible and a violation of First Amendment rights.

SEVERSON: Kohn says it would be unethical for government employees to keep some things secret—that it’s their duty to report wrong-doing.

KOHN: If you’re looking at, say, the name of a confidential informant, there’s really no public need to know that. If you’re looking at, say, the military’s shooting down a journalist, well, there’s tremendous public need to know about that.

ROWELL: One of the questions is who is going to decide what ought to be released? Is it somebody who is familiar with all the arguments back and forth about how this relationship is going to play out, or is it somebody who is a self-appointed observer sitting in some remote place?

SEVERSON: Steven Aftergood heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

STEVEN AFTERGOOD: If there is a problem with WikiLeaks, in my mind, it’s that they are not sufficiently responsible in what they put out, and they do not distinguish between what serves the public interest and what does not.

SEVERSON: New York Times officials say they felt an enormous ethical obligation to report the WikiLeaks cables responsibly. David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for the paper. He was one of as many as 30 staffers who sifted through the WikiLeaks documents before the Times published excerpts.

DAVID SANGER: We made judgments about which ones of those we thought were legitimate and which ones were not. For example, we were perfectly willing and thought it was very important that we remove from the cables the name of dissidents, the name of sources, the name of mid-level officials who had talked to the United States and who might suffer some punishment in their home countries for that.

SEVERSON: Steven Aftergood says even though his mission is to promote transparency in government, he thinks WikiLeaks has gone too far.

AFTERGOOD: There is no certain knowledge that anyone has been physically harmed by the leaks. At the same time, if you or I were one of those individuals named in the documents, I think we would be looking over our shoulder for many years to come.

ROWELL: The issue is: Are there things which are justifiably secret and ought to be kept secret? And there are.

SEVERSON: Rowell has served as ambassador to Bolivia, Portugal, and Luxembourg. He says one danger is that the consequences of leaks are often difficult to predict.

ROWELL: In South Africa, when F.W. deKlerk declared the end of apartheid, Mandela was released and everything changed. The preamble to that was more than two years of negotiations between the ANC [African National Congress] and representatives of the president’s office, and if those negotiations had ever become known publicly the whole thing would have collapsed.

SEVERSON: But Times correspondent Sanger says some leaks may have beneficial results.

SANGER: The publication of those cables, not largely in the Times but elsewhere, helped—by the accounting of some American diplomats—spark the uprisings in Tunisia, which have then led to others around the Middle East.

SEVERSON: He says WikiLeaks disclosures have shed light on China’s attitude toward the US, on North Korea’s secret exportation of missile technology, and on Arab leaders’ views of Iran.

SANGER: In our coverage you read about the king of Saudi Arabia telling the United States to cut off the head of the snake when it came to dealing with Iran and its nuclear program. By getting that information out about Iran, you’ve now seen the Arab press become more willing to write about the Iranian nuclear program, which previously they wouldn’t do.

AFTERGOOD: I think leaks in general and WikiLeaks in particular are a response to a real problem. The problem is that the government keeps too much information secret without a valid reason.

KOHN: Since 9/11 and even before, they have grossly abused secrecy, first off by making many employees and contractors have clearances when they really don’t need it, and second, by stamping anything and everything classified, secret, top secret, whatever. It’s very simple for any agency just to stamp something confidential or secret and prevent public disclosure.

SEVERSON: Not only is there all that classified information, there are now approximately two-and-a-half-million people who have security clearances to access to those secret documents, including thousands of new private contractors hired by the government. Add it all together and it is very difficult to keep a secret in Washington.

AFTERGOOD: The policy lesson I would like to see drawn from the whole episode is that we need to be more much discriminating. Only those things that are genuinely sensitive ought to be protected as such, and everything else should more or less be out there.

SEVERSON: Stephen Kohn says there is no protection for national security whistle blowers, and there needs to be. He questions the morality of the government’s focus on the messenger while seemingly ignoring the message.

KOHN: There were no prosecutions for the people who lied about the intelligence that caused the war in Iraq. They just gave them a pass. The people who did torture they gave a pass. But people who want to blow the whistle on those incidents—they’re coming down hard on and throwing the book.

SEVERSON: The individual suspected of pilfering classified information and passing it on to WikiLeaks is Private First Class Bradley Manning who has been held apparently in solitary confinement for several months in pretrial detention.

KOHN: At the end of the day, when the hysteria calms down, they must apply the First Amendment to their investigation or prosecution of Mr. Manning or their investigation and prosecution of WikiLeaks itself.

SEVERSON: Many agree it will be very difficult to prosecute WikiLeaks if it acted only as a publisher. Few expect that organizations like WikiLeaks are going away.

AFTERGOOD: There is a void that has formed as a result of the downsizing, so to speak, of journalism. Where there were relationships between government officials and beat reporters, there is now a vacuum. Wikileaks is one of the things that has stepped in to fill that vacuum.

SEVERSON: The person who founded Wikileaks, Julian Assange, says his goal is to expose unethical behavior by governments and organizations. Others question his motives.

SANGER: He believed that the publication of this material would embarrass the United States and make public a huge gap between what America says it is doing and what it is doing around the world. In fact, I think it had the opposite effect. I think that we learned from this that American diplomats by and large are doing what they say they are doing.

SEVERSON: For now the investigation of WikiLeaks continues, and so do the leaks.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/02/thumb01-wikileaks.jpg“The issue is are there things which are justifiably secret and ought to be kept secret, and there are,” says former Ambassador Edward Rowell.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/11/february-11-2011-wikileaks-ethics/8125/feed/6Bradley Manning,David Sanger,Diplomacy,Edward Rowell,ethics,First Amendment,intelligence,journalism,Julian Assange,national security,secrecy,transparency"The issue is are there things which are justifiably secret and ought to be kept secret, and there are," says former Ambassador Edward Rowell."The issue is are there things which are justifiably secret and ought to be kept secret, and there are," says former Ambassador Edward Rowell.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno8:47Andrew Bacevich: American Power and Military Policyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/08/06/andrew-bacevich-american-power-and-military-policy/6761/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/08/06/andrew-bacevich-american-power-and-military-policy/6761/#commentsFri, 06 Aug 2010 17:08:00 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=6761More →

In a new book, this historian and professor of international relations writes that America’s long military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq “demonstrated the folly of imagining that war could be mastered” and demolished “Washington’s pretensions to moral superiority.”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/08/thumb02-bacevich.jpg

]]>Watch University of Notre Dame peace studies and political science professor George Lopez, currently a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, comment on the consequences of the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding a federal law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, even if the help takes the form of training for peacefully resolving conflicts. Interview by Julie Mashack, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly associate producer for news.

Watch Notre Dame peace studies and political science professor George Lopez, also a fellow at the US Institute of Peace, comment on the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to terrorist organizations./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/06/thumb01-georgelopez.jpg

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: Winning the Catholic vote could be the key to victory in the swing state of Pennsylvania where Jewish voters are also being courted. The contest in working-class areas of the state like Scranton is particularly intense, as Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Mary Kate Culkin is a single working mother in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a devout member of one of the largest religious voting blocs in the U.S.

MARY KATE CULKIN: I’m a Catholic. I went to Catholic school. I went to a Jesuit college. I’m pro-life, but I also believe that I should not instill my views on the masses of other people.

SEVERSON: She is a Democrat, first for Hillary Clinton, now for Barack Obama even though Obama is pro-choice and the Catholic bishop in Scranton wrote a letter saying that voting for a pro-choice candidate amounts to endorsing murder. But Mary Kate says the Democratic Party best reflects the ideology of Catholic social teaching, such as caring for the poor and working for the common good. Abortion is not the only important issue for her, although it seems to be the most important issue for many Catholic Church officials.

George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in 2004 even though his opponent John Kerry is a Catholic. Almost one out of three voters in the Keystone State are Catholics.

Mary Kate thinks the selection of Senator Joe Biden, a native of Scranton, as Obama’s running mate will help the campaign even though the Scranton bishop recently said Biden shouldn’t even ask for Communion because he is pro-choice.

Ms. CULKIN: I also think that what happens in church on Sunday and while you try and live that message for the rest of the week, the issues that come up on Monday morning are not abortion. They are feeding your kids or stretching that paycheck, or getting gas in your car, or shipping a kid off to Iraq. We temper what we hear on Sunday with what we have to do for the other six days of the week.

SEVERSON: In the Pennsylvania primary here in Scranton, Hilary Clinton trounced Barack Obama three to one. A lot of those were Catholic working class voters who identified closely with Hillary. The Obama campaign has been trying to swing those voters over to his column, but it hasn’t come easy.

Obama is not going to give up the Catholic vote this year without a fight. The Obama campaign office downtown is humming with volunteers, many of them young, handing out pamphlets, manning the phone banks. It’s a busy place.

The McCain campaign office is not so busy. We had to wait for workers and voters to show up. That’s not to say that the McCain campaign is not active and determined to hold Scranton. Listen to Paul DeFabo, another Catholic, strongly in favor of John McCain.

PAUL DEFABO (Vice Chairman, Luzerne County Republican Party): He is going to win. You know, I’m not afraid to make that statement.

SEVERSON: Paul DeFabo is a real estate agent and the vice chairman of the Luzerne County Republican Party. He was recently extolling the virtues of Sarah Palin on public television station WVIA in Scranton.

Mr. DEFABO (in an interview on WVIA-TV): She’s a real talent, this woman. She’s a real talent. She’s a quick learner. She will handle this job. She knows what she’s talking about, and for them to compare Senator Obama with her lack of experience, I don’t even know where their argument comes from.

SEVERSON: DeFabo says as a Catholic his biggest concern is abortion. He’s also upset at illegal immigration. Choosing a president who will appoint the next Supreme Court justice to overturn Roe v. Wade is important to him. He has attended eight Republican conventions and says this last one was extraordinary because of, you guessed it, Sarah Palin.

Mr. DEFABO: When she came on and I listened to her that first night, I mean it was like you couldn’t believe the enthusiasm. I mean, there were women crying. I mean, there were literally tears running down their eyes.

SEVERSON: DeFabo’s enthusiasm for McCain and Palin is matched by his disdain for Obama, and he can’t understand why Catholics could support him, especially nuns.

Mr. DEFABO: There are a group of nuns that are pushing for Obama. I don’t understand that at all.

SEVERSON: It drives you crazy?

DEFABO: Drives me nuts!

SEVERSON: DeFabo says he’s not happy about it, but he thinks race will play a role in the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania and in other states.

Mr. DEFABO: Yes I do. I’m being honest. I think it does. I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I’m just saying it’s a good possibility it can happen. Is it fair? Absolutely not. Should it be an issue? Absolutely not. But are people human beings? You know, our frailties and mistakes and whatever reason they think, yeah, it’s true.

SEVERSON: Mary Kate Culkin says she is certain that after Scranonites get to know Obama, race won’t be an issue.

Ms. CULKIN: I think he’s got more in common with the working people here in Scranton than initially they believed, and I think they are starting to come around and see that it doesn’t matter what color you are. We’re all pretty much the same.

SEVERSON: Although Jews make up only two percent of the U.S. population, they do get out and vote, especially when it comes to issues like the security of Israel. That’s why so many of them, including Lori Lowenthal Marcus, were here at the United Nations protesting the visit of the president of Iran.

This is Elie Wiesel:

Professor ELIE WIESEL (during UN Speech in New York): President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is a threat to world peace. He should not be here in New York. His place is not here, but in Europe, in Holland in a UN prison cell.

SEVERSON: Lori is a mom, a lawyer, a writer, and always was a pro-choice Democrat until Sept. 11, when terrorism became her defining issue.

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: I am a registered Democrat, and the reason why is that I believe in a lot of ideals of the Democratic Party. But since 2001, I have begun to focus on foreign policy. McCain and Palin are much better on national security and foreign policy, more in line with mine, and I don’t trust Obama in those areas.

SEVERSON: Jewish votes have almost always heavily favored Democratic presidential candidates. In 2000, Al Gore got nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote. Four years later, John Kerry received 75 percent. But Obama has been struggling, and Lori thinks it’s because, among other things, he said that after lower level negotiations he would be willing, as president, to sit down with leaders of countries like Iran without preconditions.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: We’re all in great danger from Islamic fundamentalist extremism and terrorism. So it’s not just Israel. Israel happens to be, I hate this expression, the canary in the mine. They’re first. Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly, “We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

SEVERSON: It didn’t change her mind when Obama spoke to the influential Jewish public affairs committee AIPAC two days after John McCain.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (D-IL, speaking to American Israel Public Affairs Committee): As president, I will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.

SEVERSON: She says she’s not worried about Sarah Palin assuming the presidency because she would inherit John McCain’s advisors.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: So many of my friends and almost everyone in my family is terrified of Sarah Palin. I find Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, far more frightening, far more frightening than anything Sarah Palin has said and done.

SEVERSON: Unlike Sarah Palin, Lori is pro-choice and in favor of gun control. She’s very worried about the economy, but again, the threat of terrorism trumps all.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: I know people who have lost their jobs. It’s terrifying. But the idea of an entire nation being wiped off the face of the earth — if we are not alive, doesn’t matter how much money we make or what kind of job we have.

SEVERSON: Not far from Lori’s house, David Broida, a writer who also runs a tennis center for kids, is a devoted Jew for Obama. He was there at the convention. Broida supports Obama for the same reason that Lori opposes him.

DAVID BROIDA: I am just as concerned about Israel, Israel’s security, but in my judgment Barack Obama is the better candidate on Israel for American voters.

SEVERSON: Why is that?

Mr. BROIDA: We’re interested in negotiations. Israel is in a very precarious position, with Iran being armed with nuclear weapons probably or going to be. So we need to be thinking in terms of diplomacy, and we need the best diplomatic team out there.

SEVERSON: He worries that Sarah Palin would inject religion into government, violating one of the more important Jewish concerns — the separation of church and state. Broida is worried about the sorry condition of the economy but says it should not be the only issue that drives Jews to the polls.

Mr. BROIDA: From a Jewish point of view, it’s more about the environment than it is about the economy. We shouldn’t go into the voting booth and vote our own economic interest. We should listen to the Torah, and we should listen to Jewish values. We will all get along with the economy, more or less. I know the Great Depression was devastating, and I know the current economic crisis is serious. But I know that global warming and the environmental damage that it can cause is more serious.

SEVERSON: We were surprised to hear voters themselves raise the race issue. Broida worries that it will also be an issue among Jewish voters.

Mr. BROIDA: In most instances, Jews are not bigoted in a way that would get them to vote one way or another. In this case, Jews are just like other Americans, white Americans in general. There’s going to be a certain percentage of those Americans who will not vote for a candidate on the basis of race.

SEVERSON: If history repeats itself, whoever wins Pennsylvania will have a very good chance of winning the election, and winning the Catholic and Jewish vote will be crucial to winning Pennsylvania.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Scranton.

Winning the Catholic vote could be the key to victory in the swing state of Pennsylvania where Jewish voters are also being courted. The contest in working-class areas of the state like Scranton is particularly intense./wnet/religionandethics/files/2008/10/re_thumb_1207_cover.jpg